St. Stephen's Crane Celebration

Traditionally the Fourth Sunday in Lent has been a time to remember that the discipline and somber tone of Lent is in preparation for the joy of Easter. We call it Rose Sunday or Refreshment Sunday. A little over halfway through Lent, it’s a time to look through Lent to Easter. Once again this year, what has become an annual crane migration celebration at St. Stephen’s in Grand Island falls very appropriately on Rose Sunday.

A couple of days of predicted warmer weather before the weekend should bring more of the Sandhill cranes into our area by the weekend. St. Stephen’s worship on March 10 at 8:00 and 10:30 is planned to help us celebrate the wonder of the cranes’ return and to reflect on the spiritual meaning of this and other wonders as we prepare for Easter.

Sunday’s Gospel text (Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32) is the parable of the prodigal son. In this parable, the repentant prodigal son returns home, where his father welcomes him warmly and extravagantly simply because this is his long-lost son and he has come home. The parable illustrates God’s unconditional love for all of God’s children; simply because we are God’s children, God loves us and rejoices when we return to God.

The parent-child relationship is deeper and stronger than any circumstances or conditions that strain that relationship. The prodigal son’s father cares very much about this young man who has strayed, but has no special concern for other young men who bear no relationship to him. We care most for those with whom we have an established relationship. Going out and becoming acquainted with the world around us, including the birds migrating through the Platte valley in the spring, establishes a relationship between us and the land, water, plants, birds, and other animals in our ecosystem. As we spend more time outdoors, that relationship grows, and our care for the environment deepens. Since all of this is God’s creation, strengthening our relationship with the natural world around us also strengthens our relationship with God.

Weather permitting, the St. Stephen’s Green Team invites you to join them on Saturday evening, March 9, at the Crane Trust Nature and Visitor Center (just south of the I-80 Alda interchange) at 5:00 for a guided footbridge tour to view the cranes on the Platte River at sunset. The tour is open and accessible to everyone ages 12 and up. People are free to leave the tour at any time, but cannot go back to the bridge once they have left. Cost is $15 plus tax. These tours fill up on weekends, so reservations should be made as soon as possible by calling 308-382-1820.  We will begin gathering at 4:00 for a short evening prayer service at the nature center, either outdoors on the patio area behind the building or indoors in their conference room.

Children, Melting Ice, Fires, and More

August

Platte R. near Grand Island 8/9/2012

At St. Stephen’s in Grand Island, August began with a one-day Vacation Bible School with the theme “Recycling God’s Love”. With Psalm 24:1 – “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and all who dwell therein” -- as our organizing Bible verse, we talked about the responsibility we have as God’s children to care for the earth and all the gifts God has given us. Our music director, Dan Korensky, wrote an energetic song for us based on the verse. Dan’s help was enlisted by his wife, Brittany Korensky, who took charge of VBS this year with help from other Christian education volunteers and the parish Green Team.

We talked about what happens to things we throw "away" and what happens to things we recycle, and we did “audit” of the waste from St. Stephen’s church and community center, separating out the recyclables that had found their way into the trash.

Gathering in small groups, the children wrote or drew the things in creation for which they are thankful. We gathered these together in a paper “quilt”, and Fr. Peek gathered their responses into a psalm to use in worship Sunday morning.

After lunch and games, the children used paper from discarded magazines and newspapers to make two collages. The results were stunning!

It was a good way to start a month that brought news of Hurricane Isaac, record temperatures, floods, melting Arctic sea ice, and more, and that is ending here in Nebraska with fires in the western part of the state. (See more information about the fires from the Lincoln Journal Star and KQSK radio  in Chadron.)

On August 20, the American Meteorological Association released an information statement about climate change. The concluding portion of the statement says:

There is unequivocal evidence that Earth’s lower atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming; sea level is rising; and snow cover, mountain glaciers, and Arctic sea ice are shrinking. The dominant cause of the warming since the 1950s is human activities… Prudence dictates extreme care in accounting for our relationship with the only planet known to be capable of sustaining human life.

On August 26 the extent of the Arctic sea ice fell below the record for minimum ice cover that was set in 2007. (See this from the NASA Earth Observatory.) Along with giving clear evidence of warming, affecting life for plants, animals, and humans in the Arctic, and opening more open water to absorb sunlight and accelerate the warming cycle, there are effects on the stability of the climate for the entire planet that are of grave concern. (See Why the Arctic Sea Ice Death Spiral Matters  by Joe Romm.)

Some parishes do a blessing of the backpacks (and of the children who carry them) at the beginning of the school year. We send children off to school hoping that they will learn and grow physically, intellectually, and spiritually, hoping they will grow to have meaningful and productive lives. We assume that they will experience many of the pleasures as adults as we do in Nebraska today: comfortable homes, access to clean water and adequate food, stable governments and institutions. So much of what we hope for our children depends on a stable climate!

Jesus taught us that children are important. Jesus loved the children, and we say we do, too. Talking about climate change, learning all we can about it, and making it an important issue in our common life is a way to truly love the children in our lives and around the world.

Celebrating Cranes: Deepening our Wonder

Right now, the Platte valley in central Nebraska is filled with migrating birds and the sounds they make. This St. Patrick’s Day, the Green Team at St. Stephen’s invites you not only to wear green, but to be green and join us for our Sandhill crane celebration March 17 and 18.

St. Stephen’s in Grand Island designates one Sunday during Lent as Crane Sunday, a time to highlight the wonder people experience when they stand at the river at sunrise or sunset watching and hearing the cranes take off for the fields or return to the river for the night. That sense of wonder is spiritual; the wonder we experience at the river is connected to what we do and say in church on Sunday morning. Crane Sunday is meant to make that connection explicit and to provide a time and place for mutual reflection on this and other connections between the church and the wider world.

Along with our Sunday morning celebration this year, we will be gathering at the Nebraska Nature and Visitor Center  on March 17 to experience the wonder together outdoors and to participate in some activities to help deepen our sense of wonder. You’re welcome to join us for any one of our weekend activities or for the entire experience.

The Nebraska Nature and Visitor Center is hosting ornithologist, author, and photograper Paul Johnsgard for a 2:00 program, “Winter and Early Spring Birds of Nebraska”. The more we learn about birds, the more we wonder at their habits, their beauty, and their role in our ecosystem. After the program, St. Stephen’s will have the conference room available for people to rest or gather to talk or reflect, but with good weather forecasted, most of us will walk or sit outside to soak up the sights and sounds of early spring.

We plan to gather for Evening Prayer at 4:00, either in the conference room or a quiet place outdoors. Gathering for prayer allows us to share our interior prayerful response to the joy of spring and the return of the birds, and brings us back to the connection between our joy and wonder in God and our joy and wonder in God’s creation.

For those who want to see the sunset wonder at the river, we are joining a 6:00 walking bridge tour. The cost for this is $15; call theNebraska Nature and Visitor Center at 308-382-1820 for details and registration. Others may want to stop by the crane viewing site on Alda Road to see the sunset wonder.

At 9:30 on Sunday morning, we will continue our prayerful response at the church, gathering for Holy Eucharist, and reflecting on what we experienced outdoors and how it connects to what we are reading in Scripture and thinking about as the church at Lent.

Joy to the World: Eleventh Day

Joy to the world! The Lord is come: let earth receive her king;

Let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing.

With “Joy to the world” in my heart and mind, I’m looking each of these twelve days of Christmas for the beauty and wonder in God’s world, for instances of the joy that runs through all of creation.

This is the Green Team at St. Stephen’s in Grand Island. The work we are doing is joyful and exciting, and spending an evening meeting with this group gives me great joy.

We are about to begin our second year of the GreenFaithCertification Program for houses of worship, learning and acting in the areas of environmental stewardship, environmental justice, and spirituality. We are building on a strong conservation tradition in rural Nebraska, but we are doing many new things on that foundation.

Some people look at our great environmental challenges and our overall failure to do enough to ensure a sustainable environment and despair; some simply avoid looking at any of it, denying that the challenges exist. We are doing something rather than nothing, doing what we can to lead in another direction, finding joy in one another’s support and in caring for the world we love in the name of the God we love.

Pipeline and Pie at St. Stephen's

Tomorrow evening is the forum about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline (aka Pipeline and Pie) at St. Stephen’s in Grand Island. This event is organized by the Green Team at St. Stephen’s as part of our stated mission: Drawing on Nebraska’s traditions of conservation and moved by Christian hope and purpose, we will engage in whatever learning, actions, and practices make us more caring stewards of God’s creation and better neighbors to the world’s other inhabitants.

As part of our work, we are trying to stay informed about the pipeline and the concerns that have been raised about it. The Rev. Dr. Kenneth Moore, Regional Minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Nebraska and Board Chair of Nebraska Interfaith Power and Light, will speak about why the issues around the proposed pipeline matter to people of faith. Jane Kleeb of BOLD Nebraska will share some general information about the proposed pipeline – what it is, what it would carry, where it would be built – and some of the concerns about the pipeline and its proposed route through the Sandhills and over the Ogallala aquifer. Randy Thompson, whose land is in the path of the proposed pipeline, will talk about his concerns as a landowner and conservationist. We will have time for questions and will continue our conversation over pie and coffee.

The St. Stephen’s Green Team is working toward GreenFaith certification for the parish, which includes a growing point for us: paying attention to environmental justice issues. The Episcopal Church and GreenFaith recently announced the beginning of a new cycle of the certification program in which Episcopal parishes can apply for subsidies to offset part of the cost of the program. Michael Schut, the economic and environmental affairs officer for the Episcopal Church, explains that the goals of the certification program include “supporting the development of faithful, strong environmental leadership; helping congregations learn to reduce their operating costs; and modeling creation care, spirituality and justice throughout a congregation's life and practice.”

Anyone with an interest in the Keystone XL pipeline (or in some good pie and conversation) is welcome to join us tomorrow evening at 7:30. Please come in through red doors on Cedar Street.

3+ Gardens

Rogation Days

Gusty winds kept some of us in Nebraska from big home garden projects today, while others were out there somehow keeping everything anchored down and hoping for the best (e.g. no hail storms this evening) for plants being set out. All things being equal, today would be a big gardening day. Most obviously, it's Memorial Day, the third day of a long weekend at the beginning of the summer. Less known, but in some ways more relevant, because of the date for Easter this year – which determines the date of Ascension Day (June 2 this year) and all the other days from Easter through Pentecost – today is also the first of the three Rogation Days. Traditionally, Rogation Days are a time for prayers of petition, and particularly for prayers for the land and its newly planted crops and for special blessings for fields. Today, with our understanding of the way care for the environment affects our ability to grow crops, the Rogation Days invite our prayers not only for the fields closest to home, but for the entire planet.

At St. Stephen’s this Sunday we used the Rogation Day propers and observed Rogation Sunday. We talked about stewardship of creation in the homily and at a program afterwards launching our GreenFaith green certification work. We remembered the way this work is rooted in Scripture and in Anglican tradition, and also recognized the way our parish has always cared for the parish grounds.

St. Stephen’s is downtown, right on Route 30, in Grand Island. Surrounded by blocks where the only trees are fairly young, recent additions, our corner has mature trees that have been cared for through years when other downtown trees were neglected or removed. While we lack the spacious grounds of some of our suburban churches, we have managed over the years to find space for three small gardens: a prayer garden in the courtyard between the main church building and the St. Stephen’s Community Center; a memorial garden created by the Webb family near our red doors; and a new (two weeks old!) community garden – with vegetables and flowers for whoever wants them -- behind our youth center across the street from the main building. Despite a steady drizzle Sunday morning, we processed outside for the prayers of the people, remembering the needs of the world at the community garden and blessing this newest of our three gardens. Then we walked back across the street and remembered the departed (including those who died in service to our country) at the memorial garden. Finally, we processed down the alley and through the back gate of the prayer garden to pray for our own needs and those of others dear to us.

Processing from one area to another for different categories of prayers helped us remember that our Sunday prayers and petitions aren’t just for ourselves and our ten closest friends and relations, but for the whole church and the world. Simply being outdoors in the three gardens gave us a spirit of thanksgiving that can be lacking in our standard prayers. The simplicity of our Rogation liturgy made it possible for us to be at once prayerful and refreshed.

Being in a garden, digging in the dirt, helps keep us connected to the Creator; it gives us true spiritual grounding, sometimes in a profound way. Parish gardens, whether designed for prayer and contemplation or to provide food for people, help the members of the parish remember that our lives as Christians aren’t contained within the walls of our church buildings, and they can remind people passing by of God’s gifts to us, especially the gift of new growth. Our community garden is a gift for the parish and for the wider community, a sign of the open doors and open hearts that bring new growth of all sorts to our parish.

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As noted in a July 6, 2008 post , gardens are designed for a variety of purposes in a variety of settings, but all have some spiritual benefits in common.

The rain (and perhaps the prayerfulness of the liturgy) kept cameras tucked away Sunday morning. Here is a before picture of the community garden area, a place in obvious need of some beautification! (We were relieved that a soil test showed lead levels well within the acceptable range.)

And here (click here) are some lovely slides of the prayer garden at St. Augustine of Canterbury in Elkhorn, a parish in a suburban setting where there is plenty of room for gardens. This prayer garden is listed with The Quiet Garden Trust, a network of gardens set aside for prayer and reflection.

Sandhill Crane Sunday

St. Stephen’s, Grand Island, incorporated the sandhill crane migration into our liturgy on Sunday, the third year of celebrating Crane Sunday. Because the crane migration peaks in mid- to late March, this Sunday falls during Lent. While it may at first seem a little unusual to have any sort of special celebration during Lent, the juxtaposition of our Lenten journey with the arrival of the cranes on their annual journey says something about the way Christians live in the world and about our incarnational theology.

Highlighting the connections between the salvation story and what is happening in this particular place at this particular time helps us pin Lent down to our lives and our world. The salvation story is easy to ignore once we leave church if it does no more than float somewhere up above our lives. When we see the ways in which it connects to our lives and our world, the Word remains enfleshed, incarnate, for us. Seeing the connection helps us understand what it means for God to come and dwell among us.

This Crane Sunday our weather in central Nebraska was still wintry. I drove to Grand Island partway in freezing rain and partway in snow, past dances of cranes that were well camouflaged with their gray plumage in the foggy fields. The origami cranes decorating the church took on extra meaning this year as we keep the people of Japan in our prayers. Our Christian education classes had made “bejeweled birds” on which the children had written their sometimes poignant hopes for renewal or new life at Easter. The reality of the salvation story for our own lives becomes more vivid with a range of particular concerns in mind, from the Japanese people on the other side of our planet to the children in our own parish, and with our gratitude for the abundance of God’s creation that we see with thousands of birds flying through the Central Flyway.

Our lessons Sunday morning included Exodus 17:1-7 and John 4:5-42, both reminding us of the importance of water, with Jesus talking about living water in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. Sunday’s sermon on these texts can be read here.

In Sunday’s Psalm (Psalm 95), God says, “Harden not your hearts as your forebears did in the wilderness.” One way to soften our hearts so that we can receive the living water that Christ offers in abundance is to go outside and give thanks for the wonders we find there, for the cranes, the other spring birds, the sky and the rivers and even the snowflakes, sleet, and rain.

Celebrate! (Into the Wilderness of Lent)

Quakes, Tsunami, and Spring Migration

Here in the Platte River valley the first week of Lent, the annual spring migration of the sandhill cranes has reached its peak. During the day, the fields are full of cranes feeding and dancing and making the sound that in this part of the world means the beginning of spring. At night, the cranes gather in the river for protection from predators. People fill blinds along the river and stand along bridges to see and hear the arrival of the cranes at sunset and to watch them take off again at sunrise. The Rowe Sanctuary offers a Cranecam that shows some of the wonder of this. (Sunrise and sunset are both around 7:40 now.)

Of course, the first week of Lent has also brought news of the 9.0 earthquake in Japan and the tsunami, aftershocks, and dangers from damaged nuclear power plants that have followed. The news, photos, and videos coming out of Japan have helped us see some pieces of this disaster that is too big for us to truly comprehend. It’s so big that its impact is felt here; we talk with one another about the latest news reports, we pray for the people of Japan, and we look for ways to help.

When we drove from Hastings to Grand Island for church on Sunday – a gray day with a “wintry mix” of showers, sleet, and snow – the fields were full of cranes. Nearly as dramatic were the fields of snow geese. Later that day I returned to Grand Island after checking the news and seeing updates about the extent of the damage in Japan and estimates of the loss of life. The day was still gray, and the mood of the weather seemed to match the news.

And then, on my way home, having brought communion and Ash Wednesday ashes to some of our older parishioners who can’t come to church any more and thinking about Lent and Japan and hoping the road wouldn't turn icy before I got home, I saw some movement in the gray fields. Some of the cranes were dancing. When cranes dance, they leap into the air and flap their wings. Some of the cranes are dancing in this video shot near the Platte:

On a sunny spring day, this dance fits right in with the mood of the day, and we humans think the birds must be sharing our joy. On this still wintry Sunday with such weighty news in the world, I was surprised to experience the same level of joy when the cranes began to dance.


The Omaha World Herald reported yesterday on Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s visit to the Rowe Sanctuary on Monday. Secretary Salazar, says the article, stood “silent and transfixed by the spectacle” before saying, “It’s inspirational.” His reaction is typical of people who come from other places and see the cranes for the first time. It’s a spiritual experience.

On Sunday, March 27, St. Stephen’s in Grand Island will have a special Crane Sunday to celebrate the migration, reflect on its spiritual elements, and talk about the connection between that sort of experience and what we typically talk about on Sunday mornings in the church. Because the cranes come in March, our Crane Sunday always ends up being a Sunday in Lent. Far from detracting from a proper observance of Lent, we have found that celebrating something that is so much a part of our lives during Lent deepens our Lenten journey. We don’t forget the wilderness of Lent; the wilderness of Lent helps us to appreciate the joy of the crane migration and the other signs of spring.

In our part of the world, the annual visit of the sandhill cranes is commonplace; some Nebraskans wonder what all the fuss is and can’t understand why people from faraway places come to see the spring migration in the Platte Valley. Why would we celebrate something so ordinary, and especially during Lent?

A friend who lives in Tokyo sent me a message early today. Kirk describes what it is like in Tokyo right now -- empty grocery shelves, lines at gas stations, unpredictable train service and power supply, and aftershocks from the earthquake – and says everyone looks forward to a return to normalcy whenever that may happen. He knows it is much worse to the north, and that the return to normalcy there will be years in coming. He ends his message with this: “Celebrate your normal, everyday lives.”

Everyone is invited to join us at St. Stephen’s at 9:30 on March 27 to celebrate our normal, everyday lives in central Nebraska and to focus on the wonder and joy that is ours for the noticing.

Eco-Palms

With Palm Sunday two months away, reminders to order palms for the Palm Sunday liturgy are starting to arrive at parish offices.

Last year St. Stephen’s ordered palms through the Eco-Palms project through The University of Minnesota Center for Integrated Natural Resources and Agricultural Management (CINRAM). These branches of the chamaedorea palm were lovely, and worked very well for arrangements in vases and for us to wave in procession. New to the Eco-Palms website this year is a link to The Episcopal Church as one of its partners.

The primary reason to consider ordering eco-palms is that the way they are harvested, emphasizing quality of the branches over the quantity harvested, is environmentally sustainable and also results in better pay for the workers. Consideration of the effects of our purchase of palms on both the people who harvest them and on God’s creation is important given that we use them to hail Jesus as our King.

In last year’s post about eco-palms, it was noted that the rubrics for Palm Sunday in the Book of Common Prayer (p. 270) talk about distributing “branches of palm or of other trees or shrubs” to people to be carried in the procession. In his Commentary on the American Prayer Book, Marion Hatchett wrote (p. 225) that these rubrics encourage the use of branches rather than fronds or small crosses “which can hardly be waved and certainly fail to signify a parade”. Our parish found that the change palms last year from a thin reedlike frond to full chamaedorea palms helped to change the tone of the procession. The more celebratory tone of the procession called attention to the contrast between the festive procession and the reading of the Passion Gospel later on in the service, creating a more profound liturgical experience.

I hear that there was enough of a touch of springlike weather in Nebraska last week to be anticipating Lent. I’ve been away on the Hawaiian islands of Kaua’i and Maui, reminded once again of the goodness and richness of God’s creation – seabirds, whales, flowers, and an incredible variety of palms. And back home, the Sandhill cranes, our own striking sign of the goodness and richness of creation, are beginning to arrive back in the Platte River valley. As we rejoice in the early promises of spring and anticipate the holy season of Lent, being good stewards of creation can deepen our connection with God.

Good News for St. Stephen's!

GreenFaith Certification Program

Last October, the Episcopal Church and GreenFaith announced a collaboration to enroll Episcopal parishes in the GreenFaith Certification Program. For parishes successfully completing the application process, GreenFaith provides a two-year program to help the parish become greener and become a leader for other Episcopal parishes across the country and other congregations of any faith locally, while the Episcopal Church provides half of the tuition cost for the parish.

At St. Stephen’s, we brought the proposal to the vestry, formed a Green Team, and completed the application process with a February 1 deadline. Yesterday we learned that our application was accepted! We are the first congregation of any denomination or faith tradition in Nebraska to join the Green Certification program.

We are delighted with this opportunity to learn how to be better stewards of the environment (and better stewards of our finances as utility costs go down), deepen our connection to God through remembering God’s creation in our worship and our study, and to learn how to provide religious environmental leadership in our community. The program strengthens intergenerational relationships within the parish, and this was a big part of our decision to apply for the Certification Program. It’s an opportunity to show our children that we do care about the world in which they will live as adults, to learn and work with them to do the best we can to protect their future and the future of our parish, and to say to them through our actions as a parish that God cares about them and about the world.

GreenFaith and the Episcopal Church have announced a new opportunity for other parishes to join the program with a May 1 deadline. For parishes that might be interesting in joining, there is an informational webinar available tomorrow, February 16, at 2:00. Click here to find out more about the webinar; click here to read the October Green Sprouts post New Green Opportunity for Parishes about the program. If you want to talk about how this might work for your parish or how St. Stephen’s handled the application process, please contact me. I would be delighted to have more parishes in our diocese working toward Green Certification!

Crane Liturgy

Once more the northbound wonder brings back the goose and crane, Prophetic Sons of Thunder, Apostles of the Rain.
In many a battling river, the broken gorges boom. Behold the Mighty Giver emerges from the tomb.

These words from John Neihardt’s poem Easter began the opening acclamation at St. Stephen’s, Grand Island,  on Sunday as we celebrated our second annual Crane Liturgy.

Sunday was, of course, also the Third Sunday in Lent; the juxtaposition of the Lenten journey with the arrival of the cranes on their annual journey says something about the way Christians live in the world. We welcome the joyful sights and sounds of the sandhill cranes returning to the Platte Valley once again and see through them the joy of God in creation; at the same time, we prepare ourselves for Holy Week and Easter and an opportunity to participate once again in remembering Christ’s own journey, the pain and sorrow of the cross, and the joy and power of the resurrection. We rejoice in and participate in the world while remembering we are grounded in the salvation story.

The tension between the Lenten journey and the spiritual effect of the crane migration on many of us was maintained by using the usual lectionary readings for the Third Sunday in Lent and continuing our Lenten practices such as not having altar flowers and not saying our usual alleluias in the liturgy. Because of the crane celebration, however, we also had a special banner hanging in the church, children processing in behind the choir with paper birds “flying” from poles, origami cranes placed here and there, and a garland of birds from our church school children on the pulpit.

At coffee hour, we enjoyed seeing some artwork honoring the cranes. Several of the late John Mayer’s crane pictures were on display along with other paintings and photos of cranes and some wonderful pictures from the children. It was a wonderful celebration, and we are already thinking about what we want to do with this next year. Our hope is to move it closer to the river, somewhere closer to the cranes and where more people from the community might be comfortable joining us and learning to connect the awe and wonder the crane migration evokes with the God we worship in our churches

Writing the sermon, I thought about how God can use lures like the burning bush that caught Moses’ attention and the cranes for us to nudge us to change our focus and be more open to hearing the message God has for us and seeing the things God wants us to notice. The sermon is included below.

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Sermon for Lent 3C and Crane Liturgy
Exodus 3:1-15; Luke 13: 1-9

Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.”

In this morning’s lesson from Exodus, the familiar story of Moses and the burning bush, Moses displays a capacity for wonder. He was curious about the world around him and open to seeing and learning new things. His example fits very well with our second annual celebration of the crane migration, and with our observance of Lent.

With the warmer weather this week, more sandhill cranes flew in from the south. I went out to the Platte River at sunrise Friday morning to see cranes, and I wasn’t disappointed. I was downriver from where some cranes had spent the night. I could hear the crescendo of sound as they rose up from the river, and see them as they flew away from the river into the surrounding fields. Along with the sound of the cranes were the sounds of red-winged blackbirds and the occasional honk of geese. Despite the ice and snow underfoot that morning, I knew this all meant that the seasons are indeed changing and spring is coming in!

When people go and watch the cranes, whether they’re visitors seeing them for the first time or local folks who see them every year – they often talk about the experience using the same words we use to talk about other experiences that we easily recognize as spiritual. “It’s awesome!” or “Incredible!” they say, or “I can’t find the words; it’s indescribable.” As people of faith, it’s important for us to name this experience for what it is, to connect the dots between the wonder we experience out there by the river and the God we worship in our churches.

Even hearing some of the scientific facts about the cranes can evoke a sense of wonder: When they are migrating, for example, they typically fly 200-300 miles in a day; sometimes, with a good tail wind, they go as far as 500 miles. Fossils that are structurally similar to sandhill cranes are more than nine million years old, making this an incredibly – and wonderfully – old species.

And yet, from a different perspective, what the cranes are doing is unremarkable. While this is a unique animal, the birds that fascinate us every spring aren’t doing anything unusual or new: the cranes are simply doing what cranes do.

Before returning to Moses and his sense of wonder and curiosity, let’s take a look at the Gospel for this Third Sunday in Lent. Our passage this morning actually contains two distinct messages.

The first part of today’s Gospel looks at the question of why bad things happen to some people and not to others. How about those Galileans who were killed while they were in the temple offering sacrifices? Or those people who were killed when a tower fell down on them? Did bad things happen to them because they were worse sinners than other people? No, says Jesus; we are all sinners, and all need to repent, to turn toward God, or something worse than these things – the loss of our souls – will happen to us. When an earthquake hits Haiti, it’s neither good theology nor good science to try to figure out what great sin someone committed to cause the earthquake; ditto for hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and landslides. The children in Haiti who will go through life with missing limbs or missing parents because of the earthquake were not being punished by a vengeful God. When I hear people like our mission team members who have worked in the Dominican Republic talk about the poverty and hardship of the people in churches there, they usually also talk about how gracious and generous the people are. They are good people dealing with bad circumstances, no more sinful than the rest of us.

Why would people today ask this same question? Well, if I’m a pretty good person and think bad things happen only to bad people, then I can go around thinking nothing bad can happen to me. This sort of magical thinking disguised as piety lets me use faith as a charm to ward off troubles rather than a means of finding a path through life’s inevitable difficulties, big and small, in a way that glorifies God.

Sometimes this irrational thought that if I don’t do anything especially bad then nothing bad will happen to me leads to inaction. Just as a child who is regularly punished or belittled for any sort of mistake can become extremely withdrawn, we sometimes get so focused on avoiding any sort of risk that we don’t do much of anything at all. If we don’t do anything, then we don’t risk making a mistake. But the parable of the fig tree in the second part of today’s lesson says that eliminating risk by doing nothing is not acceptable.

A little later in Luke’s Gospel (Ch. 19), Jesus tells the parable of the talents. The slaves who take the talents entrusted to them and invest or multiply them are rewarded, but the slave who takes the talent he is given and wraps it up and hides it, fearful of making a mistake that will bring the nobleman’s anger on him, is the one who has everything taken away from him. Jesus makes the same point in today’s parable about the fig tree: the unproductive fig tree is taking up resources and not producing anything, so the owner of the vineyard wants the gardener to chop it down. The gardener intercedes on the tree’s behalf, getting another year for the tree to start producing figs. It’s nearly too late for this unproductive tree, but there’s still a second chance. Just as we delight in the cranes doing what cranes do, someone growing fruit trees and vines delights in these plants doing what they do – producing fruit. The problem with the fig tree isn’t that it isn’t producing apples or oranges, or that it isn’t solving a math problem like a human or singing like a bird, but that it isn’t producing any figs.

The point seems to be that we are supposed to be productive, to bear fruit, in some sort of way, but how do we know what God expects us to do? It’s obvious what God expects of a fig tree or a crane, but what does God expect of me? These questions are especially important during Lent, when we focus on the sort of self-examination and openness to God’s call that we hope to have throughout our lives.

This is where a second look at Moses and the burning bush can be helpful, because the story shows us how easy it can be to hear God when are willing to look and listen. A sense of wonder and curiosity helps us be open to hearing what God is saying to us.

Moses is curious not because there’s a bush burning but because of the way that it’s burning: there’s fire, but the bush isn’t being consumed by the fire. Moses notices this – the first step – and then chooses to look at it. “I must turn aside and look at this great sight,” he says. He doesn’t say, “I don’t understand it; that’s stupid,” or “I’m busy; I don’t have time to look at some bush,” or “It’s so boring here; there’s nothing to look at.” He doesn’t close his mind to the information; and he doesn’t refuse to believe what’s right in front of him even though it doesn’t fit with what he has always believed about bushes and their properties.

For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, God can use lures like migrating cranes and burning bushes and all sorts of things in the world around us to get our attention. And there are lots of ways to look and listen, especially today. Things that we can’t see or hear directly because of either their distance from us or their properties are things that we can know in other ways. Photos and video clips and sound recordings from every corner of the world are available to us; books and newspapers and magazines in both paper and electronic form bring us information. All sorts of scientific instruments coupled with our knowledge let us explore the smallest structures of living things on our planet, the physical properties of other planets and distant stars, and the patterns of ocean currents and air currents. We can know which species of plants and animals are nearly extinct and which are thriving; we can know the patterns of bird and animal migrations, study their behavior, and predict fairly well how changes in human population, land use, and climate might affect them.

Once Moses pays attention to the bush, to this sort of lure that God uses to gain his attention, God speaks plainly. God makes sure Moses is clear on God’s identity, and then says, “I’ve noticed the misery of my people in Egypt and have come to deliver them; so come, I will send you out to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt.” This is not something Moses really wanted to hear, and his initial reaction is to say, “Who am I that I should go talk to Pharaoh?” This is perhaps one of the reasons we keep our eyes and ears narrowly focused on familiar sights and sounds and keep our minds closed to ideas that don’t fit the narrow range of whatever specific worldview we prefer; when God speaks, what we hear can be intimidating or unsettling in some way. When we look around, we might see things that disturb us and might know that God wants us to pay attention to these things. But we aren’t left alone in our discomfort; God, knowing Moses’ discomfort, assures Moses that God will be with him. And we need to take the risk; refusal to look is refusal to follow God.

When Moses first turns aside to the bush, God instructs him to take off his sandals because the place where he is standing is holy ground. There’s no special tent or building there, no religious symbols or monuments. It’s holy ground because it’s where Moses is hearing God’s voice. Any place we walk can be holy ground if it’s a place where we are especially open to God’s presence. For many of us this time of year, the Platte River valley is holy ground. The sights and sounds of the cranes lure us out of our everyday routines and concerns, out to take some time to look and listen and feel the beginning of spring, out to reconnect with the Earth. It calls us to look up from our own small worlds so we can see the wonders of the world around us. Every place where we take off our shoes – where we intentionally take the time to look and listen – is holy ground.

Lent is a time when we often work on clearing space in our lives so that we can have more time to look and listen. Moses learned a lot about God and about the work God wanted him to do by paying attention to the burning bush. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that we can learn a lot about God and God’s purposes by studying nature; he also taught that the one uniquely human quality was reason. Just as fig trees flourish by producing figs, we flourish as human beings by using our capacity to reason. We can learn a lot about God and God’s purposes by looking and listening and then thinking about what we have seen and heard.

Humankind is reluctantly beginning to look and listen to the signs of changes in the earth’s climate that could progress to a point that will make life as we have known it unsustainable. Many people choose to look away from the scientific evidence, to discount, dismiss, or ignore it. It’s intimidating; it makes us uneasy; and thinking about it is just plain difficult. The implications of how we might have to change our lives are equally scary for many of us. The fig tree in the parable was using up resources but not doing anything useful; the gardener got it a little more time to try to turn that around. There was hope. We don’t know what happened to that fig tree, if the following year found it full of fruit or cut down.

We have a little more time also to look, listen, and find the courage to go where God calls us. May the presence of the sandhill cranes among us give us a sense of God’s presence as we experience the hope and joy of increasing light and warmth. Amen.

Sunrise Signs and Wonders

Yesterday’s warmth and sun brought more sandhill cranes back to the Platte valley. I went up to the river this morning looking for cranes, and I found them!

My other experiences of crane-watching have involved groups of people as well as flocks of birds. The places where it’s easy for me to park a car and walk to a place with a good view are, of course, the same places that work well for others, and most March mornings there are several people, both local folks and bird watchers from other places, sharing the experience.

This morning, though, I was the only person at the viewing area I visited. Maybe word of the cranes’ return hasn’t spread yet, or maybe the remnants of winter are keeping people indoors. It was above freezing, but still chilly, at sunrise today, and the paths to the river were icy and still snow-covered in places. With little traffic on the nearby road, I could listen to the cranes and to other welcome sounds – water flowing where a channel has opened up in the frozen river, a red-winged blackbird, the occasional honk of geese. The cranes’ sound crescendos dramatically when a group rises up from their roosting spots on the river to fly off to spend a day feeding and dancing in the fields. As I stood near the river with lots of birds around and no people, the river and fields and sky seemed very big. At the same time, the curve of the river with the cranes flying in arcs overhead gave a sense of the curve of the Earth, a roundness that brought a feeling of comfortable enclosure despite the space, a sense of home and security, a sense of God’s love and care for all of creation.

Sometimes the signs and wonders God gives us simply appear in our everyday lives, as the burning bush did to Moses; sometimes they come to us when we intentionally put ourselves someplace where we know we are likely to see something that evokes wonder, as I did in going up to the river at sunrise. The two situations aren’t really that different, though, as both depend on our being curious enough and open enough to recognize signs and wonders when they appear.

People in central Nebraska are welcome to join us at St. Stephen’s in Grand Island at 10:30 this Sunday as we celebrate and give thanks for the signs and wonders that come to us in the crane migration.

Robins, Cranes: Signs and Wonders

Here in central Nebraska we woke up to more snow today. After some significant thawing and melting of the snow pack that has been around since December, the ground is once again covered in white. Yesterday afternoon, though, the freezing fog that gave me the discouraging thought on my drive to church that perhaps we need to write a new hymn called “In the bleak late winter…” lifted, and there was enough sunlight through the thin clouds to finish melting the snow in the center of our yard.

I’d been disappointed not to see any sandhill cranes on my foggy trip to Grand Island in the morning; I’ve yet to see any this year, though I’ve heard that there are indeed some already here. Spotting the first cranes of the season is a sign of hope, a reminder that spring is nearly here. There is also great hope, a sense of constancy, in seeing that this migration, which has been part of springtime here for millions of years, continues. This week’s weather, once we get past this snowy day, is supposed to be warmer and sunnier, just the sort of weather that will bring large flocks of cranes back to the Platte Valley.

After that disappointment, it was a wonderful surprise to glance out our kitchen window in the afternoon and see our small yard filled with robins. I leave leaf litter on the garden over the winter to enrich the soil in the spring. More than twenty robins were in our yard sorting through the leaf litter for something to eat and splashing in the puddles from the melting snow. This wasn’t the sign of spring and hope that I had thought I might see yesterday, but it was all the better for being an unexpected gift.

The Sustainable Faith forum in Omaha on Saturday was a good event, with lots of conversation about the relationship between faith and environmental concerns, and about how we in the faith community can best engage these issues. Toward the beginning of our time together, we watched a short animated film called “Wake Up, Freak Out, then Get a Grip” that does a good job of explaining how and why the tipping point for climate change is approaching faster than scientists had originally thought. The film explains the positive feedback loops that accelerate the process of climate change, but also ends with “the good news”, a reminder that it isn’t yet too late to make changes that will keep us from reaching the tipping point.


Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

Next Sunday, March 7, St. Stephen’s in Grand Island will be celebrating the crane migration at our 10:30 Eucharist. One of our lectionary texts for Sunday is Exodus 3: 1-15 , Moses and the burning bush. Moses notices the burning bush and takes the time for a closer look; when he does so, God speaks. Moses’ sense of wonder made him open to hearing God. For some people, the crane migration is nothing special; they don’t see why people get excited about these birds coming through each year and eating the corn that’s left in the fields. Others see the arrival of the cranes as a sign of spring, a sign of hope, or a sign of constancy. When we open our eyes to the wonders in the world around us, we open ourselves to the signs of both despair and hope around us and learn how to respond faithfully to what we see.

Early Spring Abundance

Spring officially began a little over a week ago, and in that short time there has been an abundance of blessings pertinent to creation care for Nebraskans. All of these events took place against a backdrop of typical spring weather, with cold, cloudy, and even snowy weather alternating with sunny days that helped the earliest spring flowers to bloom. A variety of songbirds, including robins, wrens, meadowlarks, and red-winged blackbirds, are making it sound like spring even when the temperature feels more like winter. Here’s a glimpse at some pieces of that abundance.

Dinner in Abraham’s Tent
The Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska has partnered with Temple Israel and the American Institute of Islamic Studies and Culture to form the Tri-Faith Initiative. Friday evening at the Qwest Center in Omaha was Dinner in Abraham’s Tent: Conversations on Peace. It was a wonderful evening to share our worship experiences, make new friends, and hear an outstanding conversation about peace.

The spirit of this event was very much like the spirit I’ve experienced at GreenFaith gatherings. GreenFaith is an interfaith organization that “inspires, educates and mobilizes” people of different faiths for environmental leadership. In working with GreenFaith in their Fellowship program, I’ve found that working on creation care can build bonds among people of different faiths and different Christian perspectives. All of us recognize the Earth as God’s creation, all of us feel closer to God when we experience the wonders of creation, and all of us realize that we have a moral responsibility to help care for God’s creation.

As I described my ministry to our dinner companions on Friday evening, there seemed to be an understanding that creation care would be something that people of faith should be doing. As we Episcopalians become more aware of how environmental issues fit into our religious lives, we might very well find a strong common bond with people of other faiths who are also beginning to recognize the connection between faith and the environment.

Crane Sunday at St. Stephen’s, Grand Island
Our liturgical celebration of the crane migration on March 22 went well. Parishioners brought in beautiful paintings and photos of the cranes to share; we had a crane banner and many, many origami cranes in the church itself; our music director tailored the music to the occasion; a parishioner worked with Rowe Sanctuary to provide a fact sheet about cranes that we included with the bulletin. The sermon articulated some of the connections between this migration that marks the Earth season and what is happening in our liturgical season. People seemed very pleased that we recognized the experience of the crane migration as a spiritual experience.

A Pastoral Letter
Right before the first day of spring – but after the last Green Sprouts post – the House of Bishops issued a pastoral letter. It starts out talking about the world financial crisis, then goes on to link it to the environmental crisis. The Bishops say that God is calling us to repentance for our preoccupation with internal affairs and for our narrow focus that has kept us from addressing the concerns of suffering people in our own country and around the world. It’s a remarkable and timely letter, one that speaks clearly about the links between environmental concerns and traditional justice concerns.

Extra bits
Posts to this blog have been biweekly. The plan is to continue regular posts on alternate Tuesdays, but also to supplement these longer posts that often center on the liturgical cycle or the Earth season with “extra bits” as they come along. These will be posts about recent events, or highlighting items culled from the abundance of material related to religious environmentalism -- items such as the letter from the House of Bishops, or environmental news such as the recent report that one-third of all bird species in the United States are endangered. (The report is hopeful since it tells about some things we all can do to help these species survive.)

A Lenten Celebration

Since the last Green Sprouts post, the number of migrating sandhill cranes stopping in the Platte River valley has increased dramatically. The cranes are now easily spotted in fields during the day and on the river at sunset and at dawn.

Last Thursday I was driving home from Grand Island in the late afternoon, and had the delight of seeing cranes very near the road where I was driving. Several of them were dancing, jumping up into the air and spreading their wings.

This sight always thrills me and lifts my sprits. I’ve been thinking about why so many of us have this same reaction to the cranes, and I suspect it’s a combination of factors that make these birds so special to us. Their time with us each year is comparatively short, only six weeks or so; since their company is comparatively rare, we learn to value it. Their size coupled with the surprising grace with which they dance fascinates us. The sound when they gather at the river in the evening or when they take off in huge groups in the morning is surprisingly loud and difficult to ignore. They are a reliable sign of spring in our part of the world, an assurance that winter is nearly done.

For me, though, the biggest awe factor may be the history of this migration. According to the Rowe Sanctuary crane facts, the cranes have been making this annual trip for over nine million years. The Platte River itself is 10,000 years old, a short time in comparison. Moreover, they look ancient, like something that stepped out of a prehistoric diorama at a natural history museum. People who visit places like the Holy Land or ancient Greece or the ancient Celtic sites in Ireland are awed by the knowledge of the age of these sights and what that says about the human journey. The cranes are so much older than any of these things that we can’t even conceive of this length of time.

When people describe their experiences of seeing the cranes, they use words like ‘awesome’, ‘breathtaking’, ‘like nothing else I’ve ever experienced’. As they talk about these experiences, it becomes clear that crane-watching is a spiritual experience for many people, though they might never use that language to describe it. When we connect with these ancient birds, we somehow also connect with the Holy, with God.

The crane migration is observed in south central Nebraska with crane viewing tours, art shows, lectures, literary readings, and sporting events. At St. Stephen’s in Grand Island, we decided that it was time for the church to be involved in the celebration, to name this spiritual experience for what it is. To do so, we are planning a liturgical celebration of the sandhill crane migration for this Sunday. Since we are in the middle of Lent, we are planning carefully, balancing between the solemnity of Lent at this point of the liturgical year, and the joy of our experiences in the fields and along the river at this point of the Earth year.

Most Americans know how to have fun celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day during the season of Lent, wearing a lot of green as the earliest green shoots appear in fields and gardens. Healthy spirituality seeks a balance. Our liturgical year provides much of the balance, but being aware of tensions like those between our observance of Lent and the urge to celebrate these early signs of spring in our part of God’s creation keeps us from a narrow, rigid focus that is not especially healthy for our spirits.

You can share some of the joy and awe of crane-watching, especially at sunrise and sunset, through the web camera provided by the Rowe Sanctuary. You Tube has several videos of dancing cranes, including this one. And visitors are very welcome to join us at Saint Stephen’s in Grand Island at 10:30 this Sunday, March 22, for the Fourth Sunday in Lent and a liturgical celebration of the migration of the cranes.




Our text for this Sunday is John 3:14-21 – “For God so loved the world…”